Michael Chamberlin is smart but not a smartass in ‘Life In Moderation’
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Michael Chamberlin is smart but not a smartass in ‘Life In Moderation’

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Personality can be a powerful, transformative presence – it can fill a room, ease against the boundaries of its walls and stretch a cupboard into a stadium.

  

When the audience enters Michael Chamberlin’s world, he addresses its formal nature – it’s modestly sized with frumpy decor and the air-conditioner makes a weird grinding sound every five minutes or so. He knows the truth, however: he’s just getting an enthusiastic laugh from it. From that moment forward, you’re in for a treat ­– honest, down-to-earth chuckles with an intelligent twist.

As obvious as it sounds, Chamberlin understands the importance of connection and relatability. His style is instantly accessible with a deceptively clever construction, positioning your frame of mind while remaining completely respectful of your total awareness.

As he reels through an ever-expanding list of frustrations and observations – including social interaction, morality, politics, religion and the often-disturbing role that technology plays in all of them – you feel each laugh push some sense of satisfying catharsis. You get it, and he knows it. He occasionally falters, but the instances are trivially minor and few, bouncing back to laughs straight away.

You get a great sense of who he is – he’s cheeky and witty, but completely mortal and relatable. His style could be considered a rant, but there’s a hyper-real angle to it that slices any aggressive edge clean off, leaving you with the jocular spiel of what could easily be a close mate making light of the time he got kicked out of a video shop.

He never dictates, but rather nudges you as an equal – the weirdness of the world gets to us all at times, and he’s just letting us all know that he too escapes into strange fantasies to rectify the wrongs. You’re not alone.

Smart but simple with a laidback approach, Chamberlin’s laconic magnetism houses the humble personality of an experienced comedian. With it’s light-hearted handling of bizarre minutiae, Life In Moderation re-injects some much-needed fun into daily battles.

By Jacob Colliver